Personally, because Greek is an Indoeuropean language and its my mother tongue, I had not problem learning English when me and my family were living in Philadelphia but I don't have that much difficulty with other Indo-European languages either. I find Turkish, on the other hand, hard to learn. Therefore I think its easier to learn a language that is closer to ur L1...

Jayan wrote:I was wondering. In your opinions, which is easier to learn: a language which is closely related to your L1 but beyond a dialect (e.g. L1: English L2: Danish) or a language which is structured in a completely different way (I think an example would be L1: English L2: Japanese)?

There's no question that it's easier to learn a closely-related language than an entirely different one. The cases of interference are trivial compared to the massive advantages in terms of parallel syntax and, especially, vocabulary.

If I need to say something in, say, Spanish, I can always guess at it based on my knowledge of English. Sometimes I'm wrong and that word or construction doesn't exist (or exists with a very different meaning), but more often than not my meaning still makes it across. This doesn't work at all with Chinese or Turkish. Either I know the write thing to say or I'm completely SOL.

I recently read that Japanese speakers tend to pick up Turkish fairly easily. Guy Deutcher, commenting on this, suggests this may be a function that both languages are SVO with postpositions, which tends to drive word order in parallel.

Based on this, I would suggest that of distant languages, similarity in syntax will be a significant factor. I did find that Mandarin, being SVO and isolating, was not as difficult as I expected.

Actually they are both SOV which is a common feature of Altaic languages (not implying that Japanese is one, it's just in the general Sprachraum of them). But you are right about that. They are also both agglutinative languages.

I agree with ILuvEire that Japanese is much harder than it looks. It has very little in common with English, structurally speaking.

I'm Cherokee, and while I'm not a native speaker, my grandmother was and she taught me. Cherokee is truly alien however. There are no /p/'s /b/'s, /v/'s or /f/'s. The lips do not move when speaking Cherokee. If you speak it with a grin, you're close

Talib wrote:Actually they are both SOV which is a common feature of Altaic languages (not implying that Japanese is one, it's just in the general Sprachraum of them). But you are right about that. They are also both agglutinative languages.

I agree with ILuvEire that Japanese is much harder than it looks. It has very little in common with English, structurally speaking.

And don't forget "the kludge of heroic dimensions"—applying Chinese characters to a language that didn't really need them.

Talib wrote:Actually they are both SOV which is a common feature of Altaic languages (not implying that Japanese is one, it's just in the general Sprachraum of them). But you are right about that. They are also both agglutinative languages.